Supertyphoon Haiyan Leaves Over 1,200 Dead: The "Massive Destruction" In Photos And Videos

As reported yesterday, Typhoon Haiyan - potentially the strongest storm to ever make landfall, and stronger than Katrina and Sandy combined - has come and left the Philippines (currently heading for Vietnam), and now the time has come to evaluate the damage and count the dead. Sadly, as Reuters reports, the devastation is absolutely massive and especially in the hardest hit city of Tacloban in the central Leyte province, may match the aftermath of the Fukushima tsunami: "This is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like tumbleweed and the streets are strewn with debris." Airport manager Efren Nagrama, 47, said water levels rose up to four metres (13 ft) in the airport. "It was like a tsunami. We escaped through the windows and I held on to a pole for about an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the airport. Some of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I prayed hard all throughout until the water subsided."

And it's not over yet: the following clip from The Weather Channel summarizes the current position and heading of the Typhoon:

But while the worst may be yet to come, for the Philippines it is bad enough as Reuters explains:

A day after Typhoon Haiyan churned through the Philippine archipelago in a straight line from east to west, rescue teams struggled to reach far-flung regions, hampered by washed out roads, many choked with debris and fallen trees.

The death toll is expected to rise sharply from the fast-moving storm, whose circumference eclipsed the whole country and which late on Saturday was heading for Vietnam.

Among the hardest hit was coastal Tacloban in central Leyte province, where preliminary estimates suggest more than 1,000 people were killed, said Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, as water surges rushed through the city.

"An estimated more than 1,000 bodies were seen floating in Tacloban as reported by our Red Cross teams," she told Reuters. "In Samar, about 200 deaths. Validation is ongoing."

She expected a more exact number to emerge after a more precise counting of bodies on the ground in those regions.

Witnesses said bodies covered in plastic were lying on the streets. Television footage shows cars piled atop each other.

The Philippines has yet to restore communications with officials in Tacloban, a city of about 220,000. A government official estimated at least 100 were killed and more than 100 wounded, but conceded the toll would likely rise sharply.

The airport was nearly destroyed as raging seawaters swept through the city, shattering the glass of the airport tower, levelling the terminal and overturning nearby vehicles.

"Almost all houses were destroyed, many are totally damaged. Only a few are left standing," said Major Rey Balido, a spokesman for the national disaster agency.

Local television network ABS-CBN showed images of looting in one of the city's biggest malls, with residents carting away everything from appliances to suitcases and grocery items.

Airport manager Efren Nagrama, 47, said water levels rose up to four metres (13 ft) in the airport.

"It was like a tsunami. We escaped through the windows and I held on to a pole for about an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the airport. Some of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I prayed hard all throughout until the water subsided."

Across the country, about a million people took shelter in 37 provinces after President Benigno Aquino appealed to those in the typhoon's path to leave vulnerable areas.

"For casualties, we think it will be substantially more," Aquino told reporters.

I had the same problem with bath salts, they're a ripoff. The guy who gave them to me said to be careful and take it easy at first. I waited and waited and nothing happened. I tried some more and nothing. I ended up dumping the whole tin into the tub and still nothing. The tub was really clean afterward.

I mean, back in the 70s, I can't even tell you how much time I wasted on grass. But no matter HOW many lawn clippings I smoked, all I ever got out of it was a headache. Then there was coke --- I just about choked to death after snorting half a bottle of it! And out of deep embarrassment, I won't even relate my experiences with horse, or my disastrous encounter with Mary Jane.

Indeed, those Unplugged albums were great, an in your face, mock tribute to poor musicians, the great unwashed unsigned, and even more not so great unsigned, whose unwashed unpluggedness is not a whimsical marketing gimmick, but a fact of their lives. Much as it is for the strummers and pluckers in the Philippines, at least for several weeks.

Living in an area that is prone to hurricanes, I have been saddened by this once it appeared its track would take it over land. It is a chilling feeling to know that a monster is about to come ashore and when it does, it is devastating. The top winds were 159 MPH in my case. I can't even imagine what gusts of up to 230-240 must be like.

Hey czar, carribean gets hit and gets just as devastated. you can prepare all you want, when windspeeds get over 140 miles an hour, preparations become a lot less than guarantees that something remains standing. a big hurricane is like being in a blender, so much stuff is flying around and all the while wind and water relentlessly tear everything apart. miami had the best building codes in the world in 1992 and andrew leveled most of south dade county. the national hurricane center was specifically built no expense spared to withstand cat 5 hurricanes, and they lost all of their instrumentation. the strongest they could imagine wasn't strong enough. iv'e said before, if you haven't been through one it's tough to imagine

Largely true. However, to continue to use wood to build roofs in hurricane prone areas is MORONIC at best. They simply have to use better materials and roof styles that offer greater resistance to wind damage.

Bullshit. Taiwan gets hit by typhoons at the same level of intensity as the ones hitting the Philippines all the time. We don't get wiped out like they do, because (even though the construction companies here totally suck) most places are built to some halfway decent standard that miraculously survives being slammed by typhoons repeatedly year after year.

Last typhoon we got hit with, it was terrible, I had to turn my air conditioner on to dry up the puddle that infiltrated under my balcony door. Took almost two hours of dehumidifying the place. Man, that was almost fifteen cents (USD) of electricity I had to use to recover from the typhoon. Life sucks, you know?

Both your meteorology and engineering are lacking.
When Usagi Hit last year it was pushing sustained winds of 125 mph, and Herb (the strongest to hit Taiwan) was only pushing sustained winds of 145mph in 1996. This bitch was pushing 195 sustained, which is a whole different league for a much poorer country to engineer against.

If you have A/C you have a "sealed" structure, whereas naturally ventilated structures are more susceptible to wind damage failure. (see picture 7 and the detail in picture 6 of what happens when you introduce venting into a CMU/cinderblock wall) In addition, as wind damage destroys weaker structures it creates wind driven debris, compounding the destruction.

To actually engineer against wind driven debris at 200mph is cost prohibitive and no one does it outside of purpose built structures- ZERO WINDOWS, REDUNDANT REINFORCED CONCRETE WALLS, 14ga (or stronger) REDUNDANT REINFORCED DOORS and MULTIPOINT LOCKS.

harrison. glad you were so lucky. but it's only the cat 4 and 5's that chew up buildings. go through one of those and you'll think quite differently. there just isn't any escape, and the speed that things start going bad is incredible. nothing to mock. the body count is going to be horrible, and because of all the islands, relief might be very slow to come.

I hate to be a killjoy but be careful with how you help. My wife went to Haiti 2 years after the earthquake in order to provide medical instruction to the locals, the roads were still nearly impassible and the supply of water and electricity was still hit or miss. Millions of dollars were donated and none of it made it to the people or the infrastructure although the people were living in huts made out of tarps that said US Aid. Another fine management job by the politicians overseeing that crap. UN is useless.

The UN is generally LESS than useless, and slow. On the other hand the US Pacific Fleet has lots of mobile equipment and trained healthy people. Desalination. Earthmoving gear. Vehicles. Tents Generators. Fuck yeah. Transport helicopters. Fuck yeah. Food. The US fleet were there helping poor brown Muslim Indonesians immediately after the tsunami, rescuing and helping when it mattered most. It is a humanitarian armada, just like captain pike said it was.

I think you underestimate wildly the carnage the US military was able to inflict in Iraq doing its actual fucking job. The humanitarian and peacekeeping armada stuff they also do better than anyone else is just showboating, really. Charter them to break things and kill people. Stand back in awe. And shock.

In the Western Pacific, the US Navy has a very long record of being one of the first and best responders to natural disasters. We did it when I was in the Navy, it was done all the way back at the Great Tokyo Earthquake and the super Typhoon that devestated Hong Kong. These ships can carry a lot and have air mobile abilites. They can be on scene to resuce and get water and food ashore in record time. Ships can distill water and package it for shipment ashore. Every ship has a sick bay with good doctors and corpsmen. I hope the USN steeps in in a big way. My tax dollars are gladly spent in that manner!

Nothing to do with collectivism or corruption then? Exercise: Compare and contrast Alabama, which was hit directly by hurricane Katrina, with Louisiana, which really didn't get a harsh ride at all, as gulf coast hurricanes go.

Now see what you've attracted, LetThemEatRand? We had been working on the premise that rising water was rising water, no matter you race, or so I imagined, with all the "science" posturing on both sides.

Idiots living below sea water, voting for corrupt assholes, who were themselves smart enough to listen to engineers who had long predicted this catastrophe, but preferred to spend on vote buying, etc to benefit themselves.

It's the UN's fault they don't have roads and other infrastructure. Blame the gov for not printing money or holding someone up, to pay for these things. Why oh why can't they be good socialists like we are?

While I feel for those in the path of this thing, let's hold off on the "worst ever" hyperbole, shall we? Reliable records regarding typhoons go back barely 100 years, hardly a good sized test sample. Just because it happens while we're alive doesn't make it "historic".

Really, what issue do you have with the statement the "strongest recorded cyclonic storm at landfall"

It is a very factual statement, sorry if you try to read much more into it and use it to project your beliefs...

And yes, no doubt there have been stronger or as strong storms in the past. I expect that the storms of the Cretaceous era when SSTs were much higher could very easily be stronger, same goes as for the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum...

The sea surface temperatures needed to support such huge storm formation and life cycles requires a very unusual rise in sea surface temps. Measurements have shown that for a decade the lower atmosphere temps have risen by only a small amount, but the real heat sink is the oceans, they take up most of the heat, and todays measurements have proven that surface and deep water are on a steep rise. Physics dictates that storms can absorb more energy from warmer water, atmosphere can hold more water asa it warms too. Simple Senior High School physics can reveal the results of heat i.e. energy rise in the layers of ocean waters.

The big fear is when the next El Nino arrives and the heat now trapped in deeper Pacific waters rises to the surface and moves towrds South America. One reason air temps have been more stable as of late, in an unusual set of La Ninas i.e. cold water events. Even double back to back major La Nina years. This system has kept the warm waters in the western Pacific where they can feed these storms, when it moves east, it can and will upset the entire North American weather systems. We have grown complacent, because El Nino has been dormant. That can't last much longer.

The record weather events will not slow down, they are going to increase. I stake my reputation as a ZH poster on that fact, and welcome any feedback in the coming years that attempts to show me wrong. I don't care about politics, but I do love physics, and that science is clear. This storm is one of many to come. The bright side is, according to Larry Kudlow, these disasters can be upside pressure for stocks. So go long, as people die. We were put on this earth to turn a profit, that is why god made us.

You stake "your reputation as a ZH poster"... And here I thought we were clearly a little pathetic on this board, shaking our tiny keyboards at...at the um, wrongness, around. Anonymously too. Which is to say you stake the reputation of your ZH pseudonym. Ballsy, on this board, would be to use your real name.

You aren't going to let it go? What is your game man? Noboy demands a real name so you can get all our personal information. I don't want your name, why you so hungry for ours. "Dick" fits. I hate these pissing matches, but you seem to have an agenda. Is it climate science denial? If so, just debate that, I appreciate feedback. But not the type you are fishing for.

Thanks Rand. You and I know what upset him. But he dared not even attack the science part of my post. Why deny science really? That is a useless exercise if ever I saw one. I usually don't respond to his type of post, but when they ask you for your eal name, you know the freak has something planned. Seriously, I have never seen that on any blog anywhere anytime. Tells us your real name! Fuck'n hell!

Yeah, pretty obvious. And as for using real names, I really want emails from Dick on my home or work emails. Next thing you know he'll tell you it's snowing outside on some mountain somewhere as proof that there is no global warming.

Didn't say anything about global warming, but it looks like some of us are comically thin skinned about the reputations of our pseudonyms on ZH. Pseudonyms. The turn of phrase cracked me up.

On the subject of global warming, I will concede what the geological record seems to show pretty unequivocally, that the oceans have been rising since the end of the most recent ice age. Ice has been melting indeed, for what seems to a puny shortlived human(pseudnymed or not) taking in ten thousand plus years of it, to be a very long time. Note the choice of words " most recent ice age" Note. Geologists refer to the present time period as an interglacial period (likely interglacial period, they should properly qualify it). Inter as in, in between. The past periods of flourishing life like the present one were characteized also by ending badly. Very badly. For those who have their panties in a twist about the fates of coastal, blue state cities like NYC or SF, know that a mere 12k years ago, Manhattan was covered by a mile thick ice sheet, the evidence of which is evident in central park, and SF was about 25miles inland, without any bay to speak of, and the golden gate wasn't even a dry sort of canyon, just minus the bay. It got dug that deep by the meltwaters from the melting ice, or so geologists have demonstrated convincing evidence.

You really have a bitch with my post? That is interesting. Use your real name? For christs sake man, where did that come from. I post all the time, some people like them some people don't. I am not afraid to have a reputation as Jack Burton. I never change names, people can always go back an look for ways to tear me down if they want to. Or are you mad about the physics part of my post. Please don't be a science denier and hide behind this "Use your real name thing". Really, who goes on the interenet blogs and post their real name in the discussion sections, so anyone can have my name, address, personal information and all of it. Why would you even ask me to do that? Silly to even bring it up, no?

Look, it just cracks me up to see someone, anyone here, "staking the reputation" of their pseudonym. As to what will happen with extra heat, as you call it, being absorbed in the ocean, well that's unpredictable. The ocean and atmosphere are vast nonlinear systems. Big storms are indeed accurately seen as impromtu pumps moving heat into space in a bursty, rather than boring continuous way, but predicting them is not simple high school physics. And btw I'd guess not half of people who took physics in high school have correct notions even of the simple physics they took in high school. Which did not cover second order partial differential equations for modeling fluid dynamics wrapped up together with thermodynamics.

What part of monotonically rising energy is too difficult for that thing you call a cerebellum to comprehend? Do you always confuse space time scales so easily? Is it something that runs in your family?

If you don't take a crap for a fucking month, is one really that off-base to suggest that you're either going to shit soon or die of an impacted colon?

How can it be rising monotonically and yet be released in bursts too? Take a look at the pictures. An infinitesimal fraction of the heat transported, punctually, in a frenzy, by this storm, into space, didnt quite make it, and instead went into breaking and pushing around stuff in the ground. Humans call this a storm. It isn't occurring all the time, monotonically if you will permit. It happens occasionally, or else it wouldn't have a name. It would just be normal..."Climate" I guess.

Also, look up "cerebellum"sometime. It doesn't handle any of the information processing you seem to think it should. There are whole science books you could read on it, but in this case Wikipedia will do.

Jack....I will concur with your thoughts. As a former meteorologist and someone who still studies weather and the climate as a personal interest and hobby, the sea/atmosphere boudary and connection is profound. And something that takes decades even hundreds of years to change......but like a huge cruise ship or aircraft carrier, once the change begins to take place.....once the stored potential energy begins to move, it is a crap-ton of kinetic energy being released.

I used to have a term for it back in grad school in the late 80's. I called it the "Rubber Band Snapback Theory". Once a system becomes too stretched and stressed from an overload in storage of potential energy then when the system breaks or releases that energy the resulting move back to stasis is violent and chaotic. Same analogy applies to a pendulum where one stops its "normal" motion and then pulls back the pendulum much farther than when it was first swinging.

Although I have no doubt that we are contributing to some of the climate change around the world.....I still have doubts that it is the end all and be all of what we are seeing. Our time on this planet is such a small flyspeck of time that we have NO clue as to what "Normal" really is. We may be in for a rude awakening as to what normal has been and will be again.....regardless of what we are doing to the planet. Particularly if the planet is trying to "snap" back into a more "normal" state.

Seems as if Mother Earth is showing signs of an impending "blow off" top such as we are seeing buildng in our stock markets. Could we be seeing some Quantum Singularity between the irrational actions of man in the realm of finances and government playing out in Mother Nature? And could this be a better way of understanding climate change than any pollution or greenhouse gases we are putting into the atmosphere?

Or could it be that something has to change or humanity will end up destroying itself through over-reach and the earth is somehow on a yet unknown Quantum way preparing for pre-emptive action?

Don't mean to get all Hippy Dippy Weatherman......and I am not one who believes in the whole "Gaia" earth is a living entity bullshit. But perhaps the Gaia bullshit does have a rational Quantum Mechanical explanation.

That was a fun post. Explaining anything in quantum mechanical terms, among practitioners of quantum physics,involves use of a certain famous second order partial differential equation whose solutions are not real, and look like probability amplitude waves. An extremely simple case of its practical use is on the hydrogen atom. IF you discount relativistic effects AND you simplify your treatment of the proton aggressively, you still have to solve a second order partial differential equation in FOUR variables, and the resulting excellent model of a single hydrogen atom you get after eight pages of really hard math is still inadequate to explain observation. You can fix it a little by introducing "perturbation theory" and various fudges like that to deal with your oversilification of the one proton. And you can use the relativistic version of the equation to do better still. This is for one hydrogen atom. Gaia, if she exists, is a wave equation with considerably more variables.

Some good points Jumbo. I have no stake or anything to gain in the debate between alarmists and deniers. The science is independent of them, and it is independent of politics. I frequently change my ideas based on what the latest measurements show. Like I was wavering when low level atmospheric temps got stuck, I quickly was convinced when the missing heat was found in lower levels of the oceans and in spiking surface temperatures. When I worked in semi condutor physics, heat was always a major problem. The physics of getting rid of that heat is very, very simple. The heat sink solves it. The ocean, being so much more dense than atmosphere, is our global heat sink. Storms like this feed of of that extra energy. Are we to tell the dead and missing not to worry, because politically we don't accept global warming?

The worrying bit is the measured rise in CO2, it is spiking again, no slow down in site. We will soon be at something like the atmosphere of 29-39 million years ago. That world is not what we want for modern man. If anyone brings me physics and chemistry that proves global warming is a myth, I will accept that data if it can be reproduced. The sad bit is, that to solve the problem, the whole world economy would have to shift, and that is not going to happen. We will use fossil fuels at a break neck speed, and that is that. The results are in the equations, I first began to follow this question like you in the 1980's. I expected to be long since dead before the climate change had begun in ernest. Clearly I was wrong, as were the models. In fact, we have jumped almost 50 years ahead of models. That means my kids will see the worst of it.

I am waiting for the day that the denial debate just dies a natural death. It will, as I have never, ever seen the equations to provide different outcomes in fluid dynamics and heat transfer.

Weather is all about heat transfer, from warm to cold areas. The energy added via a CO2 increase is an experiment a high school physics class can run in a few minutes.

By the way. For computers to work, the chips that is, Quantum E Mechanics HAS to be right, otehrwise the whole concept of that semi conducter action would not exist and we would not be posting here. Real world proves it. Just as real world proves global warming due to CO2 rise in the atmosphere. Blame god if you don't like it folks, he made the laws of nature according to the gods most Americans worship at.

If "the science" were "independent" would it need to be done in secret, by government funded, government beholden ivory towers? Is it just a coincidence that the solutions require more power and resources for governments? I don't think so, which is why "independent" belongs in big honking, mocking scare quotes.

nice post Jack and Jumbo. The ice cores and the unique rate of recent change is something hard to deny.It also seems intuitive that if you dig out the densest form of energy that took millions of years to form and pump half of it into the atmosphere of a fixed system in a hundred, something historically unique is gonna happen, on a global scale. The ocean heat sink is common sense as well. Everytime they re-analyze the data, its worse and faster than they thought. Our children will see big things and we will too.

When I see a dramatic increase in the frequency of Cyclones in the Western Indian Ocean and more formations of Cyclonic Hurricanes in the SOUTH Atlantic then I will believe that we have a Problem with Oceanic Warming..

There is a law of Theromodynamics. The Earth is not an adiabat. It does vary in the amount of Radiant Flux absorbed or reflected. When Ocean Temperatures warm then Cloud Formation increases. Thus the Earth's Albedo increases. The increase in Albedo reflects more Solar Radiant Flux back into Space.

Conversely when Ocean Temperatures cool then there is less Cloud Formation and the Earth's Albedo is decreased. Therefore more radiant flux is absorbed and, as a result, the Ocean Temperatures increase.

Cloud Formation acts as a Natural Thermostat. The Oceanic Temperatures are cyclical in this regard. They are dynamic.

Furthermore it is well known that our Sun is variable in the amount of Flux which it produces. It does have a 11 Year Magnetic Field cycle and delivers lees radiation at Solar Maximum and delivers more radiation at Solar Minimum.

(I know that this reads counterintuitive but at the Solar Max there are many Sunspots which radiate at cooler Temperatures. Thus the total Flux from the Sun is cooler. When there are a lack of Sunspots the Sun is Radiating a total Flux that is increased in temperature from that of Solar Max. There is a lack of "Dark" Spots "obscuring" the Radiant Energy. Actually the spots only appear dark because they are radiating less Energy than the surrounding plasma.)

That is just one aspect of Solar Variabilty.

You chose an interesting study. Why don't you attempt to correlate the El Nino-La Nina cycle to the Sunspot cycle and tell me if they are statistically correlated. What Sigma is there between those two events?

You are correct factually....but too simplistic in terms of clouds. In order for a cloud to form in the first place you need a condensate particle (technically called a cloud condensate nuclei) for water molecules to coalesce around and attract and collect further water molecules. However....not all particles are equal in their hydroscopic properties...therefore the rate at which they attract and even hold on to water molecules differs. We've thrown up a LOT of different shit into the atmosphere over humanity's lifetime, not to mention during the Industrial Age. Now....factor in volcanic eruptions, soil erosion.....even the LACK of soil where huge swaths of cities and industrialization has occured.

The physical, chemical, areal coverage and even total amount of nuclei introduced into the atmosphere at any given moment, much less natural and global phenomenon such as volcanic eruptions plays HELL with the cloud cycle which of course plays right into the precipitation cycle and the global warming / cooling cycle. And El Nino.....and La Nina....and Hurricanes....and Tornadoes.

There have been times when the Earth was an ice planet.....and other times when it was a raging hot terrarium. Which had nothing to do with mankind, pollution, man made generated greenhouse gases or even dinosaur flatulence.

The earth DOES have these natural thermostats. But just like mechanical ones .....they break down from time to time......with deleterious effects.

The greatest and most terrible storm in the history of the Great Lakes occurred one hundred years ago this weekend. Phenomenal storms are nothing new, what is new is the dumbass notion that mankind has anything to do with it.

Yup, incredible shifts in the climate of this planet occured before there even was man. It was a natural climate change that enable our species to come into existance. The notion that man can affect climate one way or the other is the epitome of humankind's narcisistic delusion with regards to our importance in the overall scheme of things. That this delusion is so prevelant on the left is revealing in itself.

Yup, incredible shifts in the climate of this planet occured before there even was man. It was a natural climate change that enable our species to come into existance. The notion that man can affect climate one way or the other is the epitome of humankind's narcisistic delusion with regards to our importance in the overall scheme of things. That this delusion is so prevelant on the left is revealing in itself.

Take 7 billion people, assume they die after 75 years and are distributed evenly in age, which is a good enough approximation for our purposes here. How many people died in the 12 hrs before and after landfall, on the whole planet. A metric shit ton. Far more people died in the USA the same day.

"By now everyone has seen crisscrossing streaks of white clouds trailing behind jet aircraft, stretching from horizon to horizon, eventually turning the sky into a murky haze.

Our innate intelligence tells us these are not mere vapor trails from jet engines, but no one yet has probed the questions: WHO is doing this and WHY. With the release of this video, all of that has changed.

Here is the story of a rapidly developing industry called Geo-engineering, driven by scientists, corporations, and governments intent on changing global climate, controlling the weather, and altering the chemical composition of soil and water - all supposedly for the betterment of mankind.

Although officials insist that these programs are only in the discussion phase, evidence is abundant that they have been underway since about 1990 - and the effect has been devastating to crops, wildlife, and human health.

We are being sprayed with toxic substances without our consent and, to add insult to injury, they are lying to us about it. Do not watch this documentary if you have high blood pressure."

Latest data coming out says 10,000 are dead, with the body count rising by the minute. This is a bad one, a really bad one. 10K is a big number. This is just the beginning. These stories like Sandy and Katrina were just a warm up for what is coming. Physics will not be denied. The heat accumulation is simply higher levels of energy, that energy will be expressed in weather events. These laws are immune to politics and Oil Compnay Public relations firms. Slowly the laws of nature over ride the flase claims of Oil executives. Their interests are to maximize profit, not to do science. I don't blame them. Their god is money, they will do anything to get more of it. Some like that sort of social morality. After all, did not god order man to maximize profits, no matter the consequences. The global warming debate is being decided by events. I maintain the events are proving global warming to be real, to be caused by CO2 levels rising from the buring of fossil fuels. It takes no courage to state the obvious. Physics are on the side of rising temperatures of air, land and water. The polar ice and glaciers are melting at breakneck speed. This is just natural given how much CO2 we pump into the atmosphere. Unahappily, nothing the deniers have been bring to the table has slowed the warming. So expect more of this. Over and over again.

What a load of shit this all is. Global ACE is at 40 year lows and we have people hyping the global warming meme while temps have stayed flat for 17 years.

If overall global temperatures have supposedly "stayed flat" for the last 17 years, then why are virtually ALL glaciers and icecaps worldwide continuing to not only thin and recede, but actually accelerating in the rate of their thinning and receding?

You can argue (idiotically, I believe) and deny global warming, but the obvious global melting of essentially every glacier, icefield and icecap laughs in the face of your head-in-the-sand warming climate denials.

BoP, I can't speak to the veracity of that particular fact, but I will add (as I was going to in my above post) that a few glaciers and icecaps around the world ARE in fact growing and advancing. But even those are only the exceptions which prove the rule (of general melting), as they are explanable by either higher localized precipitation (but still falling in the form of snow), or else by the drawing-down of ice by a smaller glacier of a parent icecap or icefield which is essentially "feeding" it at the parent icefield's or icecap's expense.

I continue to observe the ongoing thinning and receding of every glacier with which I have been familiar in Alaska over the last 20 years. I have seen the same phenomenon (or the results thereof) with my own eyes in Africa and South America, and the trend is well documented for the rest of the world as well.

If Antarctica has added net ice recently, I would suspect that it is merely due to increased precipitation outweighing increased melting --- although I remember reading of the historically unprecedented breakup of some significant ice shelves there not too many years ago.

For me, the evidence for global warming through the observable melting of glaciers and icecaps worldwide seems conclusive and irrefutable. With that said, I make no attempt to judge to what extent the earth is in the midst of a cyclical climatic event, and/or the extent to which mankind's industrial activities are causing the earth's climate to warm.